Cash and short-term investments

Cash and short-term investments is a combined figure that adds a company's cash and cash equivalents to its short-term investments, giving a single number for how much liquid firepower it has available in the near term.

The two are combined because the line between them is somewhat arbitrary. An investment maturing in two months might get classified as a cash equivalent, while one maturing in eight months counts as a short-term investment, even though both are effectively cash the company can access within the year. Combining them avoids getting hung up on that classification boundary.

This figure is commonly weighed against total debt to judge a company's net cash position, and used as a rough gauge of how much a company could deploy for buybacks, acquisitions, or to weather a downturn without needing to raise outside capital.